Death and Rebirth: Images of Death in Sicily

Photographs were often taken during funerary ceremonies in Sicily. Local photographers were commissioned to document funerals as if they were christenings, communions or wedding ceremonies; and it is no mere coincidence that in funeral portraits the relatives arranged around the coffin assumed postures similar to those seen in photos of festivities. This tradition of taking photos during such “mixed occasions” gives the images a profound significance and highlights the archaic roots of the popular ideology of death as a continuum of life.     

Seeing,Hearing and Speaking: Morality and Sense among the Panará in Central Brazil

Based on the ethnographic example of the Panará, a Gê-group in central Brazil, this paper examines the significance of vision and visibility. For Gê-speaking groups it has been suggested that while hearing and speaking are socially privileged faculties, contributing to the mature status of an individual, seeing has been considered to be an anti-social faculty and is largely associated with the exercise of negative mystical power. While not wishing to deny the appropriateness of this association, I argue that seeing and being seen, as well as the particular visual qualities of phenomena play an important role in an Amazonian lived world.     

Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror

Death Squad: The Anthropology of State Terror. Jeffrey A. Sluka. ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. 260 pp.     

In praise of the everyday: Trust and the art of social living in an Amazonian community

The article states the high evaluation that an Amazonian people, the Piaroa, place upon the artful skills of everyday existence. It is argued that their emphasis upon the creativity of daily practice is forthcoming from a powerful and egalitarian social philosophy. The difficulties of translating such a philosophy, where the human self is contextualised within a wider cosmic setting, are raised. The aim of translation would be to enable us to engage in dialogue with the Piaroa about common concerns (upon the relation of the individual to the collectivity, for instance, or upon the idea of freedom, or the question of the relation of customs to rational decision making). These are a people who overtly shun the idea of a social rule, yet strongly value sociality, their own customs, and the mutuality of the ties of community. At the same time they demonstrate even more forcefully an ‘obstinate individualism’. A major puzzle to be discussed is the notion that personal autonomy is understood as a social capacity, and a cultural one as well: the volitional I, the social relation, and the cultural artifice are an associated set of values. The centrality of the notions of reflective reason and personal trust to this particular egalitarian ethics will be discussed.     

Muscle Restructuring in Crustaceans: Myofiber Death, Transfiguration and Rebirth

Research on the dimorphic claws of the snapping shrimp Alpheushas revealed moult-associated changes in structure and biochemicalcomposition—including atrophy and biochemical modification—ofclaw muscle fibers during morphological transformation of aclaw from a pincer to a snapper. Electrophysiology, SDS-PAGEgel electrophoresis, and immunocytochemistry were used to analyzechanges in claw closer muscle function and composition duringthe transformation process. Remodification of closer muscleduring claw transformation, involving the complete loss of acentral section of fast-contracting fibers and their replacementthrough enlargement of existing slowly-contracting segmentsof the muscle, may mimic similar muscle modifications duringinitial claw development. Exposure of intact animals to environmentalecdysteroid hormones accelerated the rate of these changes.These processes appear to be a product of a remarkable trophicplasticity of crustacean skeletal muscle first discovered bySkinner.     

The Rebirth of Kinship

Kinship was one of the key areas of research interest among anthropologists in the nineteenth century, one of the most hotly debated areas of theory in the early and mid-twentieth century, and yet an area of waning interest by the end of the twentieth century. Since then, the study of kinship has experienced a revitalization, with concomitant disputes over how best to proceed. This special issue brings together recent studies of kinship by scientific anthropologists employing evolutionary theory and quantitative methods. We argue that the melding of the evolutionary theoretical perspective with quantitative and ethnographic methodologies has strengthened and reinvigorated the study of kinship by synthesizing and extending existing research via rigorous analyses of evidence.     

From Tribal Hut to Royal Palace: The Dialectic of Equality and Hierarchy in Austronesian Southeast Asia

ABSTRACT

In this paper, I will compare and contrast the Austronesian symbolic elements of the two social formations within which I have conducted extensive ethnographic and archival research, that of the highly egalitarian Buid of Mindoro, Philippines and that of the equally hierarchical Makassar of South Sulawesi, Indonesia. I will demonstrate both that their cosmological structures are built out of common symbolic elements and that these structures could be used to legitimate vastly different political systems. The common symbolic elements included a gendered cosmos inhabited by a series of parallel societies composed of animal, human and spirit subjects; the conceptualisation of human sociality as generated by shared experience within a nested series of bounded spaces; and the ability of certain agents to move between these spaces by way of specialised training, vehicles and portals.     

The Anthropology of Infectious Disease: International Health Perspectives and The Kiss of Death: Chagas' Disease in the Americas

The Anthropology of Infectious Disease: International Health Perspectives. Marcia C. Inhorn and Peter J. Brown. eds. Amsterdam: Gordon and Breach, Publishers, 1997. xv+ 495 pp.
The Kiss of Death: Chagas' Disease in the Americas. Joseph William Bastien. Salt Lake City: The University of Utah Press, 1998. xxiv +301 pp.     

The Two Maya Bodies: An Elementary Model of Tzeltal Personhood

The purpose of this paper is to draw attention to the indigenous Maya-Tzeltal distinction between two types of human bodies: a carnal body, shared with animals, and a specifically human phenomenological body. This distinction, in turn, is equivalent to the indigenous distinction between two souls: a soul in a human shape and a soul in a non-human shape, generally that of an animal species. The parallelism between bodies and souls leads me to propose a reorganisation of the indigenous concept of the person in terms of a quaternary model, which remains essentially binary (body/soul) yet permits the integration of elements which are different from each other, like the two bodies and the two souls, and yet mutually necessary to make up the person.     

中国黍稷种质资源收集、保护、创新与共享利用

项目实施13年。收集、保护了一批濒临灭绝的黍稷种质;对国家长期库黍稷种质进行了繁殖更新与补充鉴定;研究制定了黍稷种质资源繁种更新与鉴定评价技术规范;为国家长期种质库提供了黍稷新的种质资源、数据资源;建立国家黍稷种质中期保存库;评价创新了一批黍稷种质资源,为生产、育种、加工提供了优异种质(品种),取得了明显的社会经济效益。     

The dilemma posed by minority medical traditions in pluralistic societies: The case of China and Canada

Pluralistic societies such as China and Canada frequently find themselves pursuing potentially contradictory goals. China's contradiction results from a desire to preserve cultural diversity while eliminating ‘backward tendencies’ which work against the economic and social development of the country as a whole. Canada's contradiction results from a desire to preserve cultural diversity while maintaining an emphasis upon equality of rights and responsibilities for all Canadians. Behind these differences in ideology, however, is a more basic structural contradiction ‐ namely, that cultural pluralism, while considered an asset as long as it is restricted to preserving unique cultural traditions, is nevertheless a threat to a strong central government if interpreted to imply the power to set policy at the local level. To explore this issue, this article compares China and Canada in terms of three related topics. First, it briefly examines the multicultural policy of China and Canada. This is followed by a discussion of medical pluralism in China and Canada, with an emphasis upon the health of minority groups and the status of minority healing traditions. Finally, common perceptions of shamanic healing traditions in both China and Canada are considered. It is in relation to shamanism that the dilemma posed by cultural pluralism is most clearly delimited.